Letters: Ronald Reagan, Sugar Land, airlines compete

Copyright 2012: Houston Chronicle

Updated 6:36 pm, Friday, April 6, 2012

Fool me once …

Regarding "Obama: Today's GOP too radical for Reagan" (Page A3, Wednesday), President Obama said that the late former President Reagan wouldn't recognize the current GOP Congress because they are unwilling to go along with increases in taxes in exchange for less spending.

He didn't mention that Reagan rued the day he got snookered by the Democrats because he accepted the deal, tax increases were approved, and the spending cuts never happened.

President Reagan was taught a valuable lesson: Beware of Democrats bearing gifts. Today's congressional GOP members don't want to go down that road.

Don Connealy, Bryan

Developing Sugar Land

While some residents of Sugar Land are opposed to development of any apartments, the majority of those attending Tuesday's City Council meeting accepted that some apartments would be built as part of the redevelopment of the Imperial Sugar property. The major objection was to the plan to build 325 apartments in the area designated as Imperial Historic District 1.

The Historic District apartments are planned for a site less than 300 feet from existing homes in the Mayfield Park subdivision. Access to the apartment site is primarily via two lane roads (Main and Ulrich) that cannot be improved to handle any additional traffic. These roads will also handle significant additional traffic each time an event is held at the new ball park located on the Imperial Sugar Property.

A recommendation was made to the Sugar Land City Council to move the apartments planned for the Historic District to another part of the Imperial Sugar property that was further away from existing homes. This recommendation was rejected.

Unfortunately, the public hearing on the redevelopment of the Imperial Sugar property was nothing more than a charade. City council had already decided to approve the redevelopment plan as proposed before the public hearing was held.

Many concerned citizens spent their time and efforts to express their concerns regarding the redevelopment without understanding that their City Council members had already decided how to vote. Fortunately, voters have the power to fix unresponsive government via elections.

Robert Sheffield, Sugar Land

Competing airline visions

Regarding "Southwest: Plan adds 10,000 jobs here" (Page A1, Wednesday), I immediately thought about sitting with a friend last week while he was on the phone for over 30 minutes trying to talk to a representative at United.

The two airlines present totally opposite economic arguments - United claiming dramatic, measurable harm to Houston's economy while Southwest maintains their plan would add 10,000 jobs and $1.6 billion to the economy.

I hope that the mayor and City Council will look at what's truly best for the city and not be swayed by possible doomsday scenarios coming from United, which seems to have botched its chance to make a good first impression.